Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

Ling Biyu Negaverse Quest 2
So before I start, I wanted to clarify a few things from the previous vote. Firstly, since Ling Biyu is not in the same situation as Ling Qi was when she arrived, she's grown up in a cultivation household and therefore is able to have some kind of rough path she'd want to follow. This was the vote for solar/lunar - she'd know what her sister was doing and decide whether she wanted to tread a similar path or if it was not for her. You won't start out with solar qi arts, just like LQ didn't have Moon arts up until Green, the earliest being PLR. That said, your elemental portfolio is a bit tidier because you're not grabbing every art that comes your way, like LQ had to do.
Winning vote:
{} Talent 2 + d7. For the risk-takers. (Interestingly, only by 1 vote. Thought it'd be a bigger difference.) Dice were rolled on Discord and it turned out 9. Good thing this is apocrypha and not ascended fanon.
{} Archery.
{} Solar
{} Foreign scion. These all crushed their votes.
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Moving over to the foreign scion, Ling Biyu took in her visage as it came into focus. Her hair, her most noteworthy feature, a lovely gradient of hues with a deep emerald green at the roots shifting to a lighter serpentine colouring at her tips just reaching to dust her shoulders. Her face, on the other hand was a surprising monotone white - even her lips were the same porcelain tones as the rest of her features. The only standouts were slit-pupilled eyes surrounded by striking irises that could have been carved from jade themselves, framed by a line of green scales flowing up the girls' jawline and lower cheeks, where a man might have a beard instead. Ignoring the slight frisson of fear that shifted down her spine as those jade eyes locked onto hers, Ling Biyu introduced herself as her tutors taught rather than the way she wanted to introduce herself, noting the unsurprising hint of Wooden qi emanating from the girl.

"Greetings, I am Ling Biyu of the Emerald Seas province. Might I have your name?"

The as-yet unnamed girl blinked, a hint of amusement passing through her eyes before answering. "Indeed, I am Wu Tielin of the Thousand Lakes province. It is good to make your acquaintance, Ling Biyu."

Ling Biyu promptly lost her admittedly poor self control and started immediately asking a whole barrage of questions - ranging from "Why did you decide to come here?" to "What kind of weapon do you favour?" and "What do you think the Sect will be like?" She hardly gave the now-befuddled girl a chance to answer before giving her own thoughts "I'm an archer! My sister told me a whole bunch of stories about the sect and I can't wait to see whether I can get into as much trouble and make as many friends like my sister did with Bai Meiz - oh."

Ling Biyu then realised what she should really have realised earlier - that firstly this girl was obviously from a branch of the Bai family and secondly her sister was never going to let this one go. Ever. Not after her spirited protests to not follow the Moon and saying she wanted to be different, then immediately finding a member of the Bai clan in her first day at the sect.

She sighed. The hint of amusement in Wu Tielin's eyes grew larger, though now joined by an equal serving of total confusion as she tried to parse her jumble of words.

Pushing past the internal awkwardness she was feeling - awkwardness was never a barrier in the face of relentless cheer (Auntie Sixiang shouldn't have grumbled about her attitude to life when she was in earshot! It was a good motto and she immediately adopted it) - she struck up a light conversation with Wu Tielin before listening to the Elders' speech on the rules to follow for the first 3 months and confirming they were the same as what her sister had told her to expect.

Receiving the Argent Soul script and her allowance of red soul stones in addition to her set of resources in her storage ring meant to last her 3 months, she exited the disciple hall and walked towards the path to find the female residences, flitting from clique to clique. She quite enjoyed socialising, mostly because it let people pay attention to her when she led the conversation. Not that she was brash about seizing the conversation, that would be rude. Much easier to make a suggestion or side comment and let the others follow along, like the sun illuminating the path ahead. Before crossing the divide to the residences fully, she turned back to Wu Tielin beside her, realising she hadn't yet asked if she'd like to room with her yet, too caught up in the chatter and bits of gossip they were exchanging. Opening her mouth to speak, Ling Biyu was abruptly cut off by Wu Tielin herself.

"We're supposed to pair off for housing. Would you like to join me?"

Smiling, she nodded at Wu Tielin, answering affirmatively. "I was about to ask you the same thing. Where do you think we should choose to stay?" The housing provided, of course, clearly shifted in both size and comfort as one moved further away from the central large mansion, separated roughly by tiers. This was another facet of the various games nobles played to improve their relative standing and put down rivals.

"No less than the first street of homes. I am disinclined to try for the mansion, but the next level of housing is adequate."

Ling Biyu nodded agreeably, before pointing out one. She'd noticed that Ruan Jie had entered the house next to it, and she definitely wanted to form a friendship with her, if possible.

The house itself was expansive, with two floors delineated between sleeping areas on the second floor and floor and living and cultivation areas on the first floor. The first floor had a small entry hall leading to a wide combined kitchen and guest room, before two doors branching from each other into private meditation halls with comfortable mats made of cotton. The second floor had their sleeping quarters, two private bedrooms each containing sturdy, sanded trunks of wood and simple cots with thin woven mats to sleep on or under.

Ling Biyu unpacked somewhat hastily, placing her belongings in the trunk, before heading off to her meditation room. She was going to focus on the Argent Soul, as she wanted to cultivate it to the penultimate technique before attempting to breakthrough to the next realms of her cultivation. She took a moment to review her art suite before sinking into meditation, however.
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Okay, so this vote will work a bit differently to the previous one. To reduce the thread clutter, each vote option will correspond to one rating option on the post. Choose each as appropriate. The vote itself is on your favourite archery art, since that's the weapon you chose. Ling Biyu will have access to each of these 4 to learn, and indeed may well learn all 4 if wanted, but will enjoy one the most and start with that one already partially learned. This will affect your personality and cultivation going forward. As you chose Solar, I am assigning you starting elements of Fire, Heaven, Light and Wind in your chosen area of weaponry. Choose 1 art only, unfortunately no write-in as that would somewhat defeat the purpose of the vote scheme. The highest rating will let me know the path you find most interesting/fitting for Biyu. I'll also be generating supporting arts like movement or perception arts in the background.

{} Heaven's Dancing Fury Art
Yang, Heaven/Wind
Arm/Leg
Physical
A melee archery art designed to use both bow and arrow as a weapon. Channel the fury of Heaven through your bow and arrow, using both to strike at your enemy whilst the wind carries you around them, a floating dancer bringing ruin from above. 7 levels.

Rate this post 'Hugs' if you'd like this art. On a meta level, if you know what 'gun-kata' are from places like Equilibrium or RWBY - that is, the art of infusing martial arts and ranged weaponry - this art is the start of a Xianxia version of that style.

{} Windblown Searing Flame Art
Yang, Fire/Wind
Arm/Spine
Physical
An archery art designed to burn your enemies in a searing flame from afar. The power of Wind flows through your body, enhancing the speed and range of your Fire-enhanced arrows as they strike and burn your enemies over time. 7 levels.

Rate this post 'Informative' if you'd like this art. If you like watching your enemies die from afar and sniping from the backline, this is your art.

{} Trickster's Shining Bluff Art
Yang, Light/Wind
Arm/Heart
Physical/Spiritual
An archery art based on bluffing and trickery. Arrows spring forth illusions formed of light around the target, reducing their perception and defences. The light is deceptive, making targets think an arrow missed when it hit, and blinding them to the pain when it does. 7 levels.

Rate this post 'Insightful' if you'd like this art. This art could lead to Biyu having a secondary interest in Formations like Ling Qi did for a bit, only instead of using it to steal stuff Biyu would start making trick arrows in and of themselves - arrows with formations to billow smoke everywhere, or spring forth roots of light to bind and so forth.

{} Rapid Arrow Blitz Art
Yang, Fire/Heaven
Arm/Heart
Physical
An archery art based on the simple idea of an overwhelming rate of fire at short range. Heaven breathes energy into the user, hastening the user such that it appears they are firing multiple shots at once whilst fire increases the damage the arrows do to the target. 7 levels.

Rate this post 'Funny' if you'd like this art. If you like solving problems with more and more levels of Dakka, this is the art for you.

And finally give this post a like, but only if you liked the omake.

Can't like it if you voted for an art. I see a pickle. Well, whatever.

And a tag for @yrsillar , to add to apocrypha.

For once, Ling Qi did not soar as she took off toward her destination. The expense to her qi, small as it was, was not one she was certain she could afford. The map that she had swiftly memorized showed that the terrain was mostly flat, and while the marshy terrain would have been an obstacle… was an obstacle for most, for Ling Qi it meant little. As she dashed through the trees, flickering from branch to branch, and springing from one muddy islet to another, her feet left no impression in mud or grass, and even the thinnest branches barely swayed in her passing.

As she ran, she planned. Even as she sped ahead, she knew that Cai Renxiang and the soldiers would not be far behind her. She just had to slow or halt the bandits for long enough that they could catch up. Of course, if there was one thing Ling Qi felt absolutely confident that she could do, it was bogging down her enemies in illusions and mist. She knew that she could go all out on the offensive as well but…

She thought of squealing rat things, down in the dark, exploding into bloody snowflakes. Could she really do that to a person, even if they were a criminal? Ling Qi wasn't eager to find out, though… she expected that she very well could, if it came down to it. For a moment, she felt a strange stirring of… excitement at the thought. The scent of blood and burning wood seemed to fill her nose. Unsettled Ling Qi shook the feeling off, focusing on her mission. In the back of her mind, Sixiang stirred in discomfort.

The Bandits trail was not difficult to follow, though it was less obvious than she might expect for seventy men barging through a marsh. The Cai scouts had already clearly marked the boundaries of the illusion traps which peppered the route, though she could mostly sense them herself if she focused. It still saved time. Soon enough, she began to hear the noise in the distance, of boots pounding on mud, and voices cursing laggards to keep up.

As Ling Qi got her first glimpse of their rearguard, men and not a few women in eclectic and poorly repaired armor, she sprang into the air and flew, curving to her left to circle around the group to the side while still catching up. She kept a tight grip on her qi even as her eyes flickered silver and she scanned her surroundings, searching for discrepancies from the scouting reports.

As her flickering form merged with the shadows cast by weathered boughs, she studied her foes. The very first thing she noticed was the faint distortions moving around the perimeter of their formation. Her eyes tried to slide away, but Ling Qi forced herself to remain focused. She saw them for what they were then, blurred humanoid figures, like statues of clear glass moving through the marsh, visible by the faint distortion in the terrain behind them. Channeling a pulse of moon qi into her eyes, she caught a glimpse of what lay beneath the camouflage. There were three groups of them, with three men in each group. They were all late yellow in cultivation, armed with long bows of green tinted bone. They wore light green and brown talisman armor of cloth and leather. Their faces were concealed by tight head wraps that left nothing of their features visible. Ling Qi furrowed her brows as she studied them. There was something familiar about the way they moved, but she just couldn't place it.

She would have to keep an eye on them as she advanced, but she couldn't stop now. As she turned her flight to intersect their path, she began the first step of her plan. Raising her flute to her lips, she began to play the Spring Breeze Canto. As the notes of the song spread and echoed, so too did her senses. She saw clearly each member of the bandits formation. The majority were Red Souls, but there were still nearly twenty yellow souls of varying strength in their formation. The bandits were armed well with a miscellany of weapons, but most had bows, and a few of the stronger yellow cultivators had talisman crossbows stowed on their backs.

Of their two leaders, one was a tall, spindly man with furitive features and long ill kempt hair, he clutched a war fan in one hand and his eyes never stopped moving darting over their surroundings with a sort of nervous energy. He wore the same sort of mismatched light armor as the rest, but the dark green cloak around his neck glimmered in her qi senses. His counterpart was almost his opposite, a short, stoutly built woman. Her weapon was a heavy war axe. Of the bandits, she was the only one wearing fully metal armor. Both were only early Green.

More importantly, the white cloth wrapped package on her back, and its Cai emblem were just a decoy. Using up the remainder of the Inquisitive study technique allowed her to peer beneath the illusion and see the plain wooden box and the paper talisman pinned to its side. No matter where she looked, Ling Qi saw nor sensed any sign of the actual package.

Still as the sound of her song washed over them, the tall man had stiffened and more than a few other heads had snapped up. Their swift march began to slow and the first blooming whorls in the areas qi began to spin up as defensive techniques began to activate within their formation.

Ling Qi felt Sixiang's readiness and Zhengui and Hanyi's excitement. She once again felt a strange thrill of excitement. There was no turning back now. Her qi surged as she shot throw the shadows like an arrow, passing by one of the outlying bands of camouflaged archers. Color and Sound Exploded outward from her position, raucous phantasms erupting in a wave of mad joviality to engulf the nearest bandits. She felt another spirit pulse with power pushing back against her technique, but between its potency, and the bolstering given by Sixiang and her own Support arts, the attempt failed utterly.

Cries to fall into formation and prepare were drowned out by laughter and song and men stumbled in confusion swinging weapons fruitlessly at dancing and laughing phantoms. Yet, Ling Qi was swiftly reminded that these weren't her usual opponents, badly organized teenagers with only minimal experience working in tandem.

There was plenty of confusion and disorder as she descended upon them, but still cohorts of red cultivators swiftly formed around their yellow soul leaders, and she felt the ripples as scores of defensive and perception techniques activated. Ahead of her and behind her, eyes flared with a multitude of colors and weapons were unlimbered, searching the phantasmal revel as bowstrings were drawn back.

Most went far wide, piercing giggling fairies who reformed in the aftermath, but nonetheless Ling Qi flowed around a crossbow bolt leaving it to kick up an explosion of mud and water as it detonated in a thunderous blast, and a single arrow, sizzling with toxic qi fired by one of the hidden archers nearly clipped her shadowy form. As she flickered through it's path, she met the eyes of the spindly man at the head of the formation.

He waved his fan, and she felt the surge of disorienting lake qi unleashed. For a bare instant, she felt strange and floaty as if all of her channels were in the wrong places and her mind had forgotten how to command them, but Sixiang's chaotic qi washed over her a moment later banishing the feeling.

In a burst of black smoke her Singing Mist Blade shot out, twirling and singing as it cut through the air where the man's head had been and circled back already seeking his shoulder blades. It was amazing Ling Qi thought absently, that controlling it took no more effort than flicking her fingers these days. Leaving the Spring Breeze Canto to echo on its own, Ling Qi began to play her most familiar Melody. As the first notes began to sound, her phantoms cheered and laughed, frothing cups rising into the air while hooves and feet stamped the ground in a thunderous drumbeat.

For the first time since the tournament, Ling Qi put her full power behind her Mist of the Vale technique, giving the technique as much qi as it could accept. Enhanced even further by the Joyous Toast technique, mist exploded outward in every direction, a rolling tidal wave hundreds of meters high, as black and impenetrable as the night sky. Many among her enemies screamed as it engulfed them, devouring their entire formation and world itself.

In the darkness and isolation, commands and orders to rally were muted and distant, and her revel of phantoms took on a darker cast, their features and songs alike warping and growing eerie in the depths of the mist. Behind her, there was a heavy thud and a massive shadow began to form in the mist, towering over her and the bandits alike.

Yet her enemies did not break, run or scatter. They huddled even closer together, men and women dragging wayward comrades back in line as they struggled to orient themselves and seek an escape. She felt spreading pulse of heavy metallic qi rippling out from the woman at the front of the formation, anchoring and bolstering spirits against the mist, and she felt the tall man's qi branching out like the flows of a river, granting his sight to key members of his group. The next volley of arrows was far more concentrated. The mist and the phantoms took most, but Ling Qi still found herself facing down dozens of arrows and bolts, more than a few of which were too potent to allow to simply pass harmlessly through her shadowy form.

Still, she was swift, and the handful that brushed her were deflected by the power of her gown, even in this form. The same was not true for the ear splitting blast of sound that crashed down on her as she wove around the last sizzling arrow. In the moment of her distraction, the tall man had released a spirit beast, a gigantic dragonfly two meters long, it buzzed through the air almost as swiftly as she did, and the thunderous noise of its wings slammed down on her like a hammer, flattening the earth and mud for a dozen meters around. Though it failed to do more than minor harm, it still broke her One with Shadow technique, leaving her standing fully corporeal on the muddy ground. Amidst the bandits, more shapes began to emerge, not from every one of their yellow souls, but from enough.

Of course, Ling Qi's response to that escalation was already here. The Sound that Zhengui made as he emerged fully did not resemble his still childish 'speaking voice'. It was instead, the natural bellow of an enraged eight meter long tortoise. Zhen snapped out, swift as a shadow and snatched the dragonfly spirit that had struck her out of the air. The massive insect let out an earsplitting shriek of agony as burning fangs punched through its exoskeleton. Ash poured out from Zhengui's maw further darkening the area around them with burning particulates, and Ling Qi felt roots spreading under the earth.

And beneath all the thunder and noise, a soft, almost shy song began to ring out. The first man effected a mid yellow archer at the edge of the formation stumbled out of line with his fellows, his eyes glassy and dazed as he shrugged off their attempts to pull him back.

Ling Qi kept her eyes locked on the tall man, even as viridian light rippled across her body, the Ten Ring Defense Technique hardening flesh and bone against further attack, while beginning to draw a thin trickle of qi back into her depleted reserves to replace what she had spent. Her blade circled him like a hungry wolf, and the dull steel sword he had sent out to contest it groaned and shuddered under the cry of her singing blade. He was the one that was allowing them to shoot so accurately she thought. So perhaps it was time to cut him off. Even as she fell back in Zhengui's ash, she began to play, and the tall man's eyes widened in alarm as the mist closed around him. He tried to resist, tried to slip out of the effect, but bolstered by Sixiang, there was no escape.

Attacks still came, bolts and arrows and beasts falling upon her, but only the eerily accurate arrows of the once hidden archers proved still accurate enough to be a danger. But a danger they were. They had repositioned themselves by now, moving to surround her and Zhengui. Their techniques were far more uniform than the rag tag collection of arts the bandits used. They fired with discipline, and every arrow glowed with virulent purple light. Where they struck, plants rotted and the ground turned dark with poison. Yet for all that they reinforced each other perfectly, their collective arts enhancing their attacks enough to force her to dodge rather than simply allow them to pass through, her superior cultivation was telling. Twenty Seven arrows flew from nine bows in the blink of an eye, and all but three failed to even come close to touching her. Of those three two glances off, burning sizzling lines into the verdant light of her defensive art, and third pierced through and drew a tiny cut across her shoulder that burned painfully in the moment before Sixiang purged the poison.

Zhengui took their attack poorly. Spearing roots stabbed up through one trio's formation, forcing them to scatter, and she caught a glimpse of broken wings and twitching legs disappearing down Zhen's throat in the moment before a searing glob of liquid fire threw up a cloud of steam where it landed in the midst of another formation, drawing the first cries of pain from them all.

Yet her enemies used the distraction well. Ling Qi's head whipped around as she felt something powerful echo in the mist, and ahead of the formation, her mist split apart, not dispelled, but forced apart, opening a lane for the bandits to escape through. Their formation moved with renewed vigour, pushing hard for the exit, save for the illusionist and a dozen lost stragglers unable to keep up. Ling Qi scowled, she didn't know what had done that, but if they thought they could just escape…

Red eyed shadows joined her laughing phantoms, clawing and snapping at the heels of the bandits. She ignored the cries of pain as men were swarmed by scores of hungry shadows, and pushed on to the finale of the melody. As the Travelers End empowers mist and shadow, the open lane shuddered and began to close, mist rolling back in to shut off their escape.

There was someone else here she knew, the armored woman had not done that, and the tall man was still trapped in her elegy, fighting off her Singing Mist Blade with his own increasingly battered sword while his qi drained away. Yet those archers were still piercing her mist, even if their arrows were now stinging Zhengui like a swarm of hornets, drawing blood and chipping at his scales even as his monstrous vitality fought back against the poison. One of the masked archers at least had slumped suddenly, and ran into his reach, only to be snatched up by Zhen, pumped full of venom and flung away screaming.

Yet she still couldn't sense whoever this last opponent was and it was beginning to worry her. Naturally, that was the moment when a warhorn sounded behind her. Ling Qi felt an intense build up of qi and then a lance of light so dense that it seemed almost liquid cut through her mist and carved a line of devastation through the struggling bandits. Yet, to Ling Qi's eyes it was obvious that it had been a blind shot, it carved through too far to one side, missing the center of their formation. Ling Qi felt her stomach turn as she saw the moment of impact, a pair of straggling reds at the edge of the formation, caught in full in the blast. They didn't burn, or explode and get thrown back.

No, the light simply passed through, and everything from their waists up simply ceased to exist. The men behind them were no luckier, until the light finally splashed against a hastily pulled up wall of packed mud and earth, boring through and cooking the mud into glass, but weakened enough to merely burn the men on the other side.

Ling Qi looked to her rear, and she could see Cai and the Soldiers she had brought with her. Her liege was obvious at the center of the line, flying above the earth on wings of radiance, sword in hand. The men behind her were no less bright. Their armor and weapons glowed a luminous white, and together, they made an artificial dawn. With spears drawn and leveled, they advanced in an implacable line toward the edge of her mist.

Then Ling Qi's instincts screamed danger, and she pulled up the power of her Deepwood Vitality technique just in time to meet the head of an arrow barely a centimeter from her head just as the thundercrack of its flight reached her ears. Eyes wide, Ling Qi jerked her head to the side just as her defensive technique shattered. The arrow flew by, and through the perspective granted by her Harmony technique, she saw the trunk of the tree it struck disintegrate, rotting into a black slurry in a handful of seconds.

Ahead of her, she saw a shape rising from the earth hundreds of meters away, just outside of her mist, in the direction of the border. He stood atop the head of a titanic mud brown serpent, a dozen meters long or more. He himself was dressed much like the hidden archers, in clothing of brown and green, and the warbow held in his hands was far more deadly in appearance, recurved and as long as he was tall, the arrow knocked there looked like more of a small spear. On his back, she caught sight of white package, stamped with the mark of the red butterfly.

Unlike the other archers though, his head was uncovered, leaving his long hair, black and streaked with dark green to fly free. More Importantly, it left the upper half of his face bare, revealing his golden, slit pupiled eyes.

"Can't expect peasants to do a Bai's work I suppose," she heard him sneer as he began to once again pull back that monstrous bow. Ling Qi found herself all too aware of how swiftly the cultivation advantage could change. He was a Framing Stage Cultivator, the fifth step of the third realm, and his spirit beast at the third step.

[] Tactics?

Same basic rules as last time

Spoiler: Ling Qi Status

Minor Wounds
Moderate Qi expense

Zhengui
Minor wounds

Sixiang
Minor Qi expense

Spoiler: Enemy Bai?

cultivation difference added
Qi B Init ~B
P. Hit ~S P. Pen ~A
p. Av~S
S. Av ~A